Michigan Engineer Article - Bernard Lacroute

By Karen Thomas (BA '75)

As a small boy growing up in a tiny village in
the Burgundy region of France, Bernard Lacroute (MSE
EE '67) made a life-changing discovery. "My
father, a woodworking craftsman, taught me to create
toy trucks and planes from pieces of pine and
Erector-set parts," he said. "At the age of eight, I
already knew that I loved building things from
scratch."

Bernard and Ronni
Lacroute savor the fruits of their recent
labors -- fine wine from their WillaKenzie
Estate vineyard and winery in Oregon's
Willamette Valley.

Since then, Lacroute has taken his penchant for
creating and constructing into the computing world
-- building innovative machines, then entire
companies. At Digital Equipment, he developed the
VAX minicomputer and made Ethernet commercially
viable. Turning 40 as he joined Sun Microsystems, he
helped to blend a "bunch of brash, bright
twenty-somethings" into a smoothly running team,
pursuing fresh ideas (the then-new concept of
desktop computers) and helping turn Sun into a
multi-billion dollar powerhouse. A risk-taking
entrepreneur who nevertheless thrived in
corporations, Lacroute succeeded because, according
to Ronni (AM LSA '67), his wife of 34 years, "He's a
moving target who inspires others to keep up with
him."

One of six NASA fellows selected from hundreds of
European applicants, Lacroute said of his time in
Michigan, "To be blunt, I was attracted not by the
appointment's prestige but the opportunity it
offered to visit the United States." He returned for
good after working just six months for a French
aerospace company, eager to leave a society that
guaranteed security and status in return for
following a lockstep progression of jobs and routine
assignments. "French industry assumed that you
couldn't do much until you were 40," he explained.
"I didn't have the patience for that. I wanted to be
constrained only by my ability, not the system."

Lacroute still recalls the excitement of joining
Digital in 1969 to create the VAX, the first 32-bit
minicomputer. He marvels that "the company let its
own team build this machine, hardware and software,
from scratch. We started literally with a blank
sheet of paper and built an architecture that lasted
20 years, a reference in industry even today."

Joining Sun in 1983 as its first executive vice
president of engineering, he guided the company's
growth from a $4-million-a-year manufacturer of
technical workstations to a $2-billion-a-year
supplier of distributed computing systems. His
contributions ranged from technical (he developed
the SPARC microprocessor, still used to build Sun's
machines) to marketing ("Our concept of open
computing was a powerful argument; customers weren't
locked in to one specific vendor").

Today, at 57, Lacroute divides his time between
Silicon Valley and Oregon's picturesque Willamette
Valley, where he runs Willakenzie, his award-winning
vineyard and winery, named after the sedimentary
soil that nurtures over 100 acres of grapes. At
Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, a high-tech
venture-capital firm, he continues to pursue
projects in line with his boyhood dreams: "They're
not afraid to start companies from scratch," he
explained. His startups include Tivoli Systems, a
networking software company acquired by IBM for a
billion dollars, and Flextronics, a contract
manufacturing company with current annual revenues
of more than $10 billion.

Lacroute plans to phase out of Kleiner within two
years, but his retirement won't be conventional.
"Burgundians don't play golf," he said. "We drink
wine or make wine."

Bernard and Ronni
Lacroute savor the fruits of their recent
labors -- fine wine from their WillaKenzie
Estate vineyard and winery in Oregon's
Willamette Valley.

Ronni Lacroute shares his passion for wine, as well
as the work it takes to make the business work. "My
role in the winery is a little of everything," she
said. "Bookkeeping, human relations, sales -- I even
did some staff training." Ronni has also found time
to work with learning-disabled kids and several
other charitable endeavors, including the Classic
Wines Auction, which benefits Metropolitan Family
Service, and the Salud Barrel Auction, which
supports healthcare for vineyard workers.

Today, Willakenzie produces 15,000 cases a year
-- "small by California standards," he said, "but
our focus is on quality, and that's the way it's
going to stay." Following a winemaking tradition
more than 500 years old, he installed a gravity-flow
system. "Instead of pumps that can bruise, grapes
fall naturally into fermenting tanks, just like
Newton's apple," he noted.

Lacroute hasn't been able to resist certain
high-tech touches, however. They include his own
invention, a computer-guided grape stomper: three
large stainless steel "feet" powered by compressed
air that would have made Lucy Ricardo's stint in the
wine tubs obsolete. Computers also perform more
sophisticated functions, including hourly
soil-moisture reports produced from ground probes
stationed at four different depths.

Like almost everything else Lacroute has
attempted, his winemaking efforts have earned
favorable notice. The Wall Street Journal gave his
1999 pinot noir its 2001 "Delicious" award, naming
it a top-10 favorite among thousands around the
globe.

"I had to learn this business from scratch, too,"
Lacroute observed. He estimated that he visited 100
wineries worldwide before climbing on his bulldozer
to clear his first acre.

"There's a theme I want to emphasize," he said.
"If you do something, you'd better be passionate
about it because then you'll figure out how to make
it work -- in spite of failures. I don't care if
you're running a marathon, building a computer or
making a bottle of wine, passion is a must. With it,
you'll find new ways and try new things. And you'll
be happy doing it."

Ronni Lacroute has a similar outlook but puts it
a different way. "Don't resist something that is
moving forward," she said. "Instead, go with it and
let it take you wherever it's going to go, and make
the best of it. There's something exciting out
there: Reach for it. And that applies to career and
marriage both."

Bernard and Ronni Lacroute are, in short, doers,
optimists and achievers, as is evidenced in every
part of their lives. In recognition of his computing
achievements and service to alumni, Lacroute
received a 1999 EECS Departmental Merit Award from
the College.

Karen Thomas is a freelance writer whose work
has appeared in McCall's, Family Circle,
American Profile and other national
publications.